Kadri on Curbing the Right of Publicity to Protect Portrayals of Real People

Drawing Trump Naked: Curbing the Right of Publicity to Protect Portrayals of Real People, Maryland Law Review, Forthcoming, by Thomas Kadri “argues that to best protect creators and their expressive works under the First Amendment, we must abandon traditional “educative” listener-based models of the First Amendment and instead adopt an approach that also protects the speaker-creator as a central part of enabling public discourse. Failure to adopt this speaker-focused theory in publicity doctrine will perpetuate confusion in the courts and state legislatures, an outcome that will have a chilling effect on creators who seek to portray real people in their work. Yet we must also recognize the privacy interests that publicity rights may serve. As we move into an era of new technology and innovation — from “deep fakes” to revenge porn — this challenge will only intensify. To address it, courts should apply a different framework when publicity rights face off against expressive rights — a framework that not only empowers free expression, but also considers the narrow privacy-based interests that we should all have in preventing certain uses of our images.”

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